HP Purchased Palm webOS For $1.2 Billion, Then Later Tried To Get $1.2 Billion [HP's Sale Of webOS May Have Failed Due To Their Looking To Not Lose Any Money On The Sale]

Posted on TFTS by Robert Nelson on Wednesday, 28. December 2011 under: Computers & Computing, Mobile/Cell Phones, PCs, Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets

Lets be upfront here, I am a gadget blogger and not a financial wizard or CEO of a major company, however even I could see that something would not be right if HP was seriously attempting to sell off the assets of Palm (webOS) for the same $1.2 billion that they paid. But that being said, a recent report is suggesting that HP was doing just that.

Palm and HP logos

Personal opinions aside though, the details of this story are coming by way of VentureBeat, who have received details from someone inside HP in regards to the sale of webOS. According to what has been written thus far;

“HP was trying to rid itself of Palm without taking a loss on its purchase, a source with knowledge of the negotiations told us.”

In other words, they purchased Palm for $1.2 billion and were then trying to sell Palm for $1.2 billion. Of course, at that point they were not selling Palm, but instead the remaining assets — webOS. Otherwise, some of the other details include that HP was indeed shopping webOS to Amazon. It also appears as if they were trying to make a pitch to Facebook as well. And while we would love to see an official statement from Mark Zuckerberg on this one, VentureBeat notes that HP was “practically laughed out of the room.” And on that note, we do have to wonder if the laughing was a result of the price or the fact that HP thought webOS was a good match for Facebook.

That all said, assuming the details of this are accurate, which we have no reason to think they are not, then we can see why HP was not able to sell webOS. Now lets hope that something actually comes from the recent open sourcing of the OS and that we see some tablets come available as HP CEO Meg Whitman suggested.

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